HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democrats in Pennsylvania have won legal battles, keeping the left-leaning Socialism and Liberation Party out of the swing state’s presidential election, at least for now, while a lawyer with close ties to the Republican Party works to help an independent candidate. Cornel West get to it.
The lawsuits are part of a series of partisan legal maneuvers involving third-party candidates seeking to get on Pennsylvania’s ballot, including a pending challenge by Democrats. for filing in Pennsylvania by an independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A Commonwealth Court judge on Tuesday upheld two Democratic Party appeals, ruling that the paperwork filed by the Socialism and Liberation Party contained serious defects and barring the party’s presidential candidate, Claudia De la Cruz, from running in Pennsylvania’s Nov. 5 election.
Seven of the party’s 19 presidential electors named in the filing were registered as Democrats, violating a political segregation provision of the law, Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter wrote. Six of them had voted in the Democratic Party’s April 23 primary.
“They literally voted in the Democratic primary and then tried to serve as electors for a third-party candidate,” said Adam Bonin, a Democratic attorney who filed one of the lawsuits. “That’s not OK.”
The Party for Socialism and Liberation announced it would appeal and accused the Democrats and their allies in a statement of “seeking every conceivable bureaucratic formality to exclude their opponents from participating.”
Meanwhile, a lawyer with longstanding ties to Republican candidates and causes argued in court that the Secretary of State’s office under Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro wrongly rejected West’s records.
“I see no good reason to disqualify Mr. West from the ballot or otherwise discourage Pennsylvanians from voting for him,” attorney Matt Haverstick said in an interview. Haverstick declined to say who hired him or why.
The Secretary of State’s office denies the legal challenge, arguing that the filings lacked required affidavits for 14 of the 19 presidential electors before the August 1 filing deadline. more comprehensive effort Conservative activists and Republican allies are currently campaigning across the country to advance the left-wing academic’s candidacy.
The election on November 5 with the Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris In Pennsylvania, the outcome is likely to be close. With 19 electoral votes, the state is in fifth place along with Illinois and is probably the state with the most votes awarded by a swing state.
Republicans and Democrats view third-party candidates as a threat that could drain crucial support from their nominees – especially given that Pennsylvania went to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 by margins of tens of thousands of votes.
The Greens Jill Stone and Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party filed petitions to get on the Pennsylvania presidential ballot unopposed.
The Democratic challenger to Kennedy is still pending, as is the Republican challenger to the Constitution Party. The Republicans have already secured a challenger to the American Solidarity Party candidate.
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In his challenge to De la Cruz, the judge cited a provision in state law that requires minor party candidates not to be registered with a major political party within 30 days of that year’s primary election.
Leadbetter, who was elected as a Republican, said it was clear that seven of the party’s 19 named presidential electors were registered as Democrats both before and after Pennsylvania’s April 23 primary.
De la Cruz’s lawyers argued that the party was free to appoint new electors or simply accept 12 of Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes instead.
But Leadbetter wrote that Pennsylvania law does not allow for post-term replacement in such cases, and that the U.S. Constitution provides for a specific proportional representation system for the states in the Electoral College. So awarding fewer electoral votes, even in a single state, would undermine that principle of proportionality.
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Follow Marc Levy on https://x.com/timelywriter.
